There is €10,000 and some silverware at stake on Friday evening as the inaugural Nachenius Tjeenk Twenty20 Cup reaches the regional final stage.

And even more important, eight teams will be battling it out in Rotterdam, Haarlem, Den Haag and Amstelveen for places in the national finals day in Schiedam on 11 August.

In Rotterdam, Sparta from the Eerste Klasse are at home to Hermes-DVS Schiedam, and they will be out to prove that their reaching the regional final was no fluke. They lost to Hermes in the opening group game, and they owe their continued involvement in the competition very largely to hard-hitting coach Luke Vivian, who made 84 against Excelsior '20 and then 38 from eight balls in the five-over thrash against VOC.

The Hermes side is not really adapted for the twenty-over game, but they do have the advantage of a steady seam attack, and they did well to bowl Sparta out for 90 first time round. If they can dismiss Vivian cheaply they should be good enough to go through.

With three Kiwis with first-class experience in their side, Rood en Wit will start as clear favourites against fellow-Eerste Klassers Hercules Utrecht in the 'Rest of the Netherlands' final. In coach Nathan McCullum, captain Jarrod Englefield, and guest player Shaun Haig the Haarlem club seem to have too much fire-power for Hercules, and go into the game looking to repeat last week's victory over them in the fifty-over competition.

Hercules, led by former Dutch skipper Steven Lubbers and with Zimbabwean international Brendan Taylor as their coach, have plenty of experience, however, and it takes just one spectacular innings to turn a Twenty20 match around.

Quick Haag, many people's favourites to win this competition, remained unbeaten in the Den Haag pool, and will be at home to neighbours HBS in Friday evening's final.

With a batting line-up packed with attacking players like Darron Reekers, Edgar Schiferli, the Mol brothers and Jeroen Brand and a seam attack - largely comprising the same list, plus Somesh Kohli - Quick are a tough proposition, and they must be expected to repeat their victory over HBS in their round-robin game.

For HBS, coach Gareth Hopkins will turn out for the last time before joining the New Zealand A side, but the key factor in this match is likely to be the HBS attack's ability to restrict Quick's scoring.

VVV Amsterdam will be looking to make it three in a row when they are at home to VRA in the Amsterdam regional final - they beat their hosts in the local competition which VRA organised last year, and then repeated their success in the opening match of this year's official tournament.

Like Quick, VVV have plenty of batsmen who can score freely in this form of the game, and they may prove a handful for the VRA attack. New international Mudassar Bukhari and coach Mohammed Hafeez head the line-up, but most of the side are capable of quick runs.

VRA, on the other hand, are also not short of hard-hitting batsmen, such as coach Ryan Maron, Tjade Groot, Darrin Murray, Peter Borren and Wesley Barresi, and on VVV's small ground we can expect relatively high scores.